Can a closet really help sell my home?

A few years ago, during a staging consultation, I was educating a client in Brentwood about the importance of organizing her closets, when she shared with me a very interesting story:

She and her husband loved visiting Open Houses and were out on their usual Sunday adventure, when they entered the home of a family with five children. As they toured the home, they opened a closet door and stopped dead in their tracks. Inside the closet, every shirt was perfectly hung and every sweater was perfectly folded – as if they had walked into Macy’s. As they began to explore other rooms, they discovered every bedroom closet, every linen closet, the pantry and every cabinet had a perfect display of items. It was pure heaven! The organization was meticulous, and they went on and on about how amazing it was to see. They couldn’t believe people actually lived like that! At that point, I knew the home seller understood what I had been telling her about the importance of organized closets and was on board with getting her closets in that kind of shape, too. She wanted a quick sell, and knew highlighting storage would help her accomplish that goal.

Out of curiosity, I had to ask how long it had been since she saw that house. Her response could have knocked me over with a feather: it had been ten years!I knew a clean, organized closet was a powerful advantage when selling a home, but at the time I had no idea it was that powerful!

Highlighting storage is one of the most important things you can do when selling your home – and most home sellers often overlook it.

Having organized closets will give you a serious leg up on the competition, even if the competition is a model home. Your competition isn’t thinking about having closets that Martha Stewart would be proud of. When de-cluttering, many home sellers simply use closets as a space to hide all of the unwanted clutter, hoping that buyers will not look inside. But the fact of the matter is that buyers will always look in the closets. They’ll discover if you are meticulous, or if you cleaned up just for their arrival.

I bet you’re thinking that your home doesn’t have much storage, so why in the world would you want to highlight it? Whether your home has lots of storage or none at all, it’s important to organize what you do have. Making the best use of space with what you have will still make a powerful, lasting impression on home buyers. A well organized space looks bigger and tells buyers that you care about your home. You have lovingly maintained it while you have lived there and are ready to pass it onto the next lucky buyer.

Here are the 5 easy steps to getting your closets organized:

Photo Credit: Busydoor.com

1. Purge extra hangers, out of season clothes and shoes

2. Remove everything from the floor

3. Color-block clothing: arrange clothes from lightest to darkest, front to back, top to bottom, and left to right

4. Neatly fold all folded clothes and color-block lightest to darkest, top to bottom

5. Create evenly spaced intervals between hangers

When your closets and pantries are clean and organized, you help the buyer create an emotional attachment to your home. The truth is that we all want to live in a well organized home, and most of us just don’t. But we can have it our next home; if there is one thing I’ve learned in my career as a home stager, it’s that home staging doesn’t just have to be about selling your house – it can actually become a way of life.

About the Author:

Anthea Click is the President of Fresh Perspectives Property Merchandising Services, specializing in staging vacant homes, model homes, and owner occupied redesign services in the Greater Nashville area including: East Nashville, Green Hills, West Nashville, The Gulch, 12South, 8thAve South, Germantown, Midtown, Sylvan Park, Crieve Hall, South Nashville, Hillsboro Village, Downtown Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin and Spring Hill. She is also a Featured Designer for Kirkland’s, sampling new products and making guest appearances on local radio and television shows. For information on staging your home, call 615-465-8086 or click on the Contact Us tab.